BULGARIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH AS A “HOLDER” OF THE NATION. A RECONSTRUCTION FROM SOCIALIST TIMES By Boryana Velcheva Submitted to Central European University Nationalism Studies Program In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Advisor: Professor Andras Kovacs Second Reader: Assistant Professor Vlad Naumescu CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2012 Abstract In Central and Eastern Europe, religion is often an important factor of collective national identity. The case of Bulgaria is not an exception – in order to understand the local context, the researcher should see Orthodox Christianity not as a system of symbols and values that create the connection between God and the believer, but as a manifested collectivity which holds communal life together. In this context, in the Bulgarian case the institution of Christianity - the Orthodox Church, has a privileged status because of its “traditional” role in Bulgaria's national history. Starting from a post-colonial perspective of secularism and based on a thematic analysis of the official newspaper of the Bulgarian Church from the 1970's, the current research shows how the attempts of the Communist party to find its place in the nationalist discourse resulted in the unification of Church and state in the national narrative, thereby creating an even stronger, “civil” image of the Christian institution. CEU eTD Collection Table of Contents Introduction................................................................................................................................2 The Research Problem...........................................................................................................5 The Research Process............................................................................................................6 State-Church Relations and Communist Nationalism...........................................................7 Literature Review.......................................................................................................................9 1. Chapter One. Secret Files and Metropolitan Bishops..........................................................21 2. Chapter Two. Method of Analysis. Description and Justification of the Data and Period of Study.........................................................................................................................................31 2.1. Data Collection.............................................................................................................32 2.1. Between Data Collection and Data Analysis................................................................33 2.3. Justification of the Period of Study..............................................................................34 3. Chapter Three. Analysis of the Data....................................................................................41 3.1. Early period (1970-1973).............................................................................................42 3.2. Late period (1975 - 1979).............................................................................................47 3.3. Preliminary Conclusion................................................................................................50 Concluding Remarks................................................................................................................53 Appendix A. Coding Scheme...................................................................................................55 Appendix B. Sample of the Coded Material............................................................................56 Bibliography.............................................................................................................................58 CEU eTD Collection 1 Introduction In order to study productively the relationship between religion, the state and nationalism, it is important to take into account the varieties of ways in which these terms are understood with regard to the specific subject of study. A classical secularist theory, describing religion as a sphere of the private life, might be appropriate for the specific development of nationalism in the European West, while the total denial of such an approach can be convenient, for example, for studying Islamic countries1. This thesis is influenced from the possibility of a “middle way” which could be useful for the understanding of nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe. For this specific purpose, it presents the case of Bulgaria and the development of the relations between the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the state in the 1970's – a period of significant shift in the political course of the Bulgarian Communist Party toward stronger nationalism. By introducing policies of “civilizing” the religious action, the party questioned the authority of the Church as the main pillar of national identity. The relationship between religion and national identity has been studied by various authors2. In this respect, the post-communist region is particularly appropriate, as it represents a variety both of ethnicities and of various religious belongings3. Moreover, the nationalist 1 Brubaker, Rogers. 2012. “Religion and nationalism: four approaches”. Nations and Nationalism, 18: 2–20. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8129.2011.00486.x 2 I.g. Brubaker, Rogers. 1996. Nationalism Reframed : Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge [England]; New York: Cambridge University Press.; Casanova, José. 1994. Public religions in the modern world. Chicago: University CEU eTD Collection of Chicago Press. 3 For the connection between ethnicity and nationalism, see Brubaker, Rogers. 2002. "Ethnicity Without Groups" Archives Européennes de Sociologie, XLIII.2: 163-189.; Brubaker, Rogers. 2004. "In the Name of the Nation: Reflections on Nationalism and Patriotism" Citizenship Studies 8.2: 115-127.; Brubaker, Rogers. 2011. "Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Modernity" Dalla modernità alle modernità multiple. Ed. Consuelo Corradi and Donatella Pacelli. Soveria Mannelli, Italy: Rubbettino. 2 conflicts in the post-Soviet space and on the Balkans have contributed significantly for the development of the academic field. Some of the most important works in the discipline of Nationalism studies examine exactly this region. Rogers Brubaker's best-known research4, for example, focuses on the rebirth of nationalism in the context of the falling apart of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. Drawing on Bourdieu's methodology, the author compares the nationalism of New Europe with the one that emerged between the two World Wars in “Old Europe” in order to introduce a new, more precise, more “institutionalized” understanding of the term and its internalization – much more complex than the broad “imagined communities” offered by Benedict Anderson. Another emblematic example of a scholar who has dedicated her career to the region is Katherine Verdery5, who examines the development of nationalist thought among the intellectual elite of communist Romania – a study emphasizing both the institutional and the cultural aspect of nationalism. The concept of religion, on the other hand, has developed in two main branches. The secularist line develops the well-know perception of the differentiation of the religious sphere from the other aspects of life. Casanova6, the most famous name in this group of scholars, contributes significantly to the field by questioning the understanding of secularism as a decline of religion, while still emphasizing this differentiation as the core of the Western modernization. On the contrary, a post-colonial perspective, well developed by Talal Asad7 and his followers, build on the basis of post-colonial view a new perspective aiming at understanding various types of secularism, just as there are various modernities, and the clear division between religion and other spheres of life does not help the understanding of CEU eTD Collection 4 Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed. 5 Verdery, Katherine. 1995. National ideology under socialism: identity and cultural politics in Ceausescu’s Romania. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. 6 Casanova, Public religions in the modern world. 7 Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the Secular : Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. 3 different possible perspectives on secularism. In this debate, again, “New” Europe fits quite well. Religion has been proven to play a significant role in defining national identities in the region, and at the same time the institution of the church has often been crucial – or at least perceived as crucial – in the nation-building process8. However, neither religion is the only factor influencing the national attitudes, nor is the Church the only institutional actor to be blamed for the development of nationalism. The Communist parties well understood the legitimizing power of the nationalist paradigm and often tried to strengthen the national affiliations, seeking, at the same time, for their own place in the national ideology, thereby reducing the inevitable contradiction between the internationalist Marxist ideology and the nationalist narrative. Totalitarian elites realized the role of the Church and often tried to isolate it in order to reduce the possibility of institutionally organized opposition. In this sense the case of Bulgaria is both representative and exceptional. In Poland, for example, the state introduced series of cultural policies in